STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

“Kabhi kabhi to humaray zayhen main aisay khayal aata hay keh agar Zardari ki baytee Swat main parhti to shaid school bund hee nahein hotay”. With these words, Malala Yousafzai, sixth grader from Swat, brought the house down during the August 19th airing of Capital Talk on Geo News. As the host tried to deflect little Malala’s perfectly pitched zinger, probably aimed at Mrs. Shahnaz Wazir Ali, PM Gilani’s special advisor on Social Issues, who was sitting nearby, Malala tightly closed her lips to contain her beautiful smile. She had just hit a homerun. She knew it. And, she was loving every moment of it.

It was a homerun less because of what was said, but more because of who said it. It was the same Malala, daughter of a very brave father, who had stood in front of national press, right in the middle of a boatload of Taliban fighters in Swat, and asked the Taliban why girls like her were not allowed to attend schools. Her father had covertly continued classes for 5th and 6th grade girls in his school even after Taliban in Swat had decreed that girls not be educated beyond 4th grade. Now, she had turned the tables and asked why the powers-that-be had allowed the situation to become so bad?

Malala’s zinger poses some deeply troubling questions about not just the sorry state of our education system, but also about who we really are as a nation. These are difficult, perhaps intractable, political questions which are outside the scope of this blog. What is within our scope, however, is “eliticization” of our education system, which is quite obvious to anyone who cares to look.

Pakistan is a country of great contrast. From the great plains of southern Punjab to the sky-high peaks of the Himalayas, the country is home to stark contrasts of geography, culture and economy. What does not get talked about enough, however, are the contrasts in our education system. In this Information Age education is the great equalizer. Or so it is said. But, how can education be an equalizer when just a few miles from where Capital Talk was being taped, the International School of Islamabad (ISoI) charges annual fee of more than $16,000? I do not know how much Malala’s father earns in a year, but if he makes what an average Pakistani does in a year, which is under $900, then he would have to save 100% of his income for 18 years before he can afford to pay for just one year of Malala’s 6th grade education at the International School. In all likelihood, the fee at ISoI would have gone up by then!

This problem of exorbitant fees and the resulting elitism in the educational landscape is not limited to the likes of International School or to primary and secondary education only. In higher education, consider the example of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). LUMS has been the leading business school in at least the northern half of the country for over two decades now, and has developed a reputation of being an “elite’s” school. The label is not wholly without merit. After all, this is a school where the annual tuition (for the recently opened School of Sciences and Engineering) is over Rs. 400,000 – almost 6x the average annual income of a Pakistani. Just as a comparison, even the most expensive universities in the US have tuition rates that are in the same range as the country’s average annual household income, i.e., $40,000 to $50,000 per year.

It is true that schools like LUMS’ SSE offer generous financial aid and need-blind admission. And, perhaps, it is also true that the kinds of finances needed to run a state-of-the-art facility in Pakistan requires these tuition levels. In short, it may well be true that the kind of education that these schools want to impart requires the kinds of tuition that they demand. But, what is equally true is that when these schools decide to operate far beyond the reaches of ordinary citizens of this country, then they also bear an awesome social responsibility. It is not enough to provide limited number of scholarships to students that make it in the door, simply because millions of students can never get the kind of primary and secondary education needed to get their foot in the door. It is no accident, after all, that three quarters of SSE’s first batch of students came from schools that follow the Cambridge system, not the local FSc system. To me, scholarships and/or financial aid is what I would expect from any institution of higher education, regardless of the social context in which it operates. In Pakistan, educational institutions MUST do more.

The responsibility for “doing more” falls heavily on institutes of higher education for two main reasons: first, by virtue of their position atop the education pyramid, these institutes dictate what good and well-rounded basic education means, so their actions, and their example, can lead to a realignment of priorities throughout the basic and secondary education system. Consider for a moment, how, say, the Beaconhouse School System would have to re-design its secondary education programs if the top-tier universities in Pakistan announced tomorrow that they would be looking at “an applicant’s demonstrated ability and interest in community service”. I think it’s safe to say that it would bring about a paradigm shift, perhaps not instantaneously but certainly in the longer run. Second, these institutes rightly claim to be the breeding grounds of tomorrow’s leaders. In fact, that’s their core selling point. Another way to say this is that, these institutions are the last pit-stop before the top-crop of the society is sent off to the races – for power, influence, wealth and recognition. The years that these students spend at the universities have a profound effect on the choices that they make once they enter their professional lives. What could be a better way to influence their priorities than by exposing them to the ugly realities and shameful inequities of life around them?

Schools like LUMS, Agha Khan University, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute and other elite private universities, therefore, have the twin responsibility of inculcating a strong sense of social responsibility among their students, staff and faculty, and uplifting the educational standards in the world outside their boundary walls. Both of these ought to be among the core components of their mission, and not just footnotes to it. While each university can come up with its own creative ways to fulfilling these responsibilities, following is a first attempt at some concrete proposals to make this happen:

• Each of these universities should establish an Office of Community Service whose aim should be to conceive, facilitate and execute university-wide community service programs. This is important because, while student organizations can do a lot on their own, an office like this provides continuity, basic organizational infra-structure and, most importantly, institutional memory to effectively and perpetually execute good programs. This doesn’t have to be a large bureaucracy; it can be something as simple as a single mid-level staffer who coordinates work of various student bodies and brings faculty into the loop by offering them small, and focused tasks.
• Service-learning should be made an integral part of the curriculum, and a program requirement for 4-year undergraduate programs. Summer internships following the freshman year can be used for this purpose. Students can, for example, be offered to tutor at low-cost tuition centers for metric and FSc students, or intern at NGOs, or organize and execute fund raising activities for university’s community service programs and other non-profit organizations.
• Universities can also “adopt” low-cost private schools and assist them in improving their standard of education. Training teachers, hosting co-curricular activities on university premise, and organizing field trips for students can all be part of this “adoption” package.
• Finally, society has given universities a unique power: the power to bestow honor upon people, primarily by granting individuals prestigious degrees for their academic achievements. But universities can also leverage this power to honor and highlight individuals who do the greater good. Unfortunately, NGOs and those who work for them often do not get the respect that they deserve. Universities can lead the way in transforming these social attitudes by bestowing honors and recognition upon these individuals. By doing so, they would be pointing a way to respect and recognition in the society that is different from the usual route through the corridors of power and wealth. A simple way to do this could be to invite people who work for the greater good to give commencement addresses and keynote speeches. Surely, they are better role models for our youth than the default option – the rich and famous.

Of all the things that watan-e-aziz needs, it needs nothing more than good men and women who see the world through the eyes of the common man, have the tools to make it a little better for everyone, and are cognizant of their responsibility of doing so. And, it is at our elite universities that all these ingredients can best be combined so that we can begin to answer Malala’s questions. And, if we don’t, Malala might ask: why can’t she go to the same school as President Zardari’s daughter after all? The lottery of womb? Something tells me it won’t be a compelling answer for this smart young lady.